


the rest is silence

by eg1701



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: A lot of them - Freeform, Angst, Canon Typical Swearing, Character Study, Family Issues, Gen, I'm Sorry William Shakespeare, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, No Dialogue, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Shakespeare, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25425154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eg1701/pseuds/eg1701
Summary: Immediately after the press conference, Kendall once again finds himself on a roof.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31
Collections: Angst and Hurt/Comfort Prompts





	the rest is silence

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [angstandhcprompts](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/angstandhcprompts) collection. 



> written for the prompt "I would love to see any good Character Study fic, that explores the mind of the character. Some trauma, PTSD, mental illnesses/disorders or violence would be a huge plus." and who would i be if i wasn't talking about kendall's character
> 
> title is from hamlet's last line in the play

Kendall couldn’t decide if he had actually fucked up his entire life or maybe saved it.  


He felt like he was living in a Goddamn Shakeperian tragedy, like he was Hamlet, and he’d cast his father as Claudius unwillingly. The son returned home only to plot his revenge, to take the king down with him. Take the family, the damn country down with him. Gertrude and Laertes and Ophelia hadn’t made it through the play after all.  


There’s something rotten in the state of Waystar.  


He’d escaped after the press conference, just barely, up to the roof, running up stairs and into elevators faster than the news.  


Just a beat ahead. By the time they saw the tweets, heard the clips, he had already passed them, running like the devil was after him. There and then gone. They’d probably wondered what he’d done this time, only to reach for their phone and realize oh _that’s_ why he was running.  


Hands jammed in his pockets, he wished he had something to drink or snort or smoke or maybe all three. And he wished that he could jump.  


Greg would probably find him up here, freaking out and talking way too much, stumbling over words like “what the fuck Kendall” and “did you just commit corprate suicide” and “what is Logan going to say” and “what the _fuck_ did you just do and am I gonna get in trouble for it.  


What was Greg? Horatio? The one to survive and tell the story? That seemed to give Greg a lot of credit, but maybe Greg was smarter than he thought.  


Or maybe his father was King Lear and he’d take all his children down with him, one by one. Dividing up his kingdom to his kids and then fucking off. Maybe Logan should have taken a page out of Lear’s book.  


(It made Greg the fool in this case, but a teacher had once told him to listen to what the fool had to say, because the fool was usually right.)  


A gust of wind blew against his face, biting and cold. He blinked against the chill and made his way to the edge. He couldn’t jump-- not just because of the glass barriers up, but because he had to pay.  


He had to make his father pay. His father had fucked them all up, big time. Maybe Logan loved his kids, but probably not really. Kendall found it very hard to believe he did. And even if he did, whatever microscopic love he had would vanish now. Had to vanish. He put himself in his father’s shoes for a moment  


(wasn’t that just where he wanted to be after all)  


but it was hard to imagine his own children pulling this. After a moment he gave up trying to imagine it. It was pointless.  


In his jacket pocket, his phone seemed to go off non stop, and after a moment, he took it out and looked at it. There were already several texts, but instead of answering them, or even opening his phone to read more, he cocked his arm back and threw it, watching it skid across the concrete. The screen probably shattered, and maybe it would break and no one would be able to have their messages delivered, or their calls reach him.  


Maybe they would think he was dead.  


He had hoped throwing it would make him feel something. Anything. Even annoyance at the fact he’d have to get it fixed or replaced.  


It did not.  


It was like a fog had descended over his brain, maybe it had always been there, but it was worse now, choking him and all he could think about was fucking Shakespeare.  


Naomi Pierce would be proud. If she ever spoke to him again. If anybody ever spoke to him again.  


And Hamlet had brought like half the cast down with him when Laertes stabbed him with that poison blade after all, not just himself.  


Who was Kendall bringing down with him?  


Who was the lucky winner?  


Step up and claim your prize!  


Did he even have the right to destroy anybody but himself? Hamlet had been a prince after all, that probably gave him some authority.  


But Hamlet _had_ been a murderer too. He was a tragic hero but he’d had blood on his hands.  


Kendall clenched a fist, feeling his nails- which he’d taken to biting on the plane ride to the city- dig into the flesh of his palm. He hoped to draw blood but all he managed was a sting. Barely felt through the haze. Waste of time.  


Hamlet had killed Polonius and Hamlet had paid the price.  


Goneril and Regen had turned against their aging father and they had paid the price. Romeo was a dumb kid and he paid the price. MacBeth had been too ambitious, had killed the king and assumed the role himself and MacBeth had paid the price too. Othello had been jealous and Caesar declared himself emperor and they’d both been killed for it.  


Was it too much to call himself a tragic hero? Heroes fucked up but heroes weren’t fuck _ups._  


He _could_ do it.  


There were plenty of roofs without barriers, plenty of people willing to sell him enough coke to make his heart explode, and twenty one bridges leading into Manhattan.  


He looked up at the sun, tearing up as he did so against the brightness. Despite the cold air, despite the enormous and royal screwing over he had just done to the Roy family, the sun still had the audacity to shine on him.  


What was it Hamlet said?  


_I am too much in the sun._  


Pretentious little prick that he was.  


A giggle escaped his lips before he could stop it. Manic sounding. Maybe he was finally cracking. He hadn’t been right since the wedding, since the accident, since well,  


(since he’d killed that boy, since he became a killer, no matter what his father said)  


Since the car crash. But who could he talk to? His father. Logan “no real person involved” Roy didn’t give a fuck about what Kendall did, so long as he shut up and did as he was told.  


His mother? She’d made it clear she couldn’t be bothered.  


Shiv would have listened probably, but he couldn’t tell her. He almost did, that night at the office, had been so close to blurting it all out in ugly sobs and unintelligible words.  


But he hadn’t. He didn’t want to get her involved.  


Couldn’t get her involved. Wouldn't get her involved.  


He could not bring them down with him. This, he had control over.  


He might be Hamlet, but Hamlet didn’t have two brothers and sister to fuck over when he killed the king.  


Maybe he wouldn’t have done so much fucking monolouging if he had. They were a group of fuck ups who would cut your throat to get ahead, but Kendall thought that maybe they did love each other. In their own fucked up ways.  


No, it was best to leave them out of this.  


(Sure he was maybe fucking over Gertrude, but maybe Gertrude deserved a little fucking over.)  


That was the only thing he was certain about, leaving them out. Oh, that and the fact that he could not jump off this roof.  


He wished that his father would have agreed, that taking the fall for the shit in cruises _was_ punishment. Kendall was desperate for someone to make him pay for what he did. The nightmares he had, the crash, the kid, the water, cold and heavy on him, the blood on his arm, the bath, the franticness of the reception, playing it off like he’d just stepped out for a smoke, not to commit manslaughter and everything was just fine, nothing to worry about here.  


He had hoped talking to the family would have been enough penance but they were so _Goddamn_ nice about it.  


_I killed your son, I killed your nephew,_ he wanted to say, like some terrible children’s rhyme, _he may have been a junkie but I’m the one who did it. Me me me. But thank you for the water, for your hospitality._  


At least it was mostly on his own terms, saying what he’d just said. The press conference hadn’t been suicide-- and hell, maybe it would be alright somehow, in some universe it might actually be alright in the end-- but it might has well have been.  


This was the third strike against his father. Three strikes and you’re out.  


The vote had been minor, the buyout slightly larger, but this was astronomically bad.  


Betrayal of Brutus proportions. Stabbing his father in the fucking heart.  


(Et tu, Kendall?)  


When was someone going to find him and did he have time to make a break for it? There were fire escapes, he could run down and out the building. Run past the reporters who were surely hunting for him like a pack of hungry dogs. Run down the street and keep running and maybe find something worth stopping for along the way.  


He couldn’t think of much. His kids? Better off without him, especially now weren’t they?  
Rava? Well, she’d made it clear that she was going through with the divorce hadn’t she. Separating herself from him before he’d done this. She’d be fine.  


Logan had told him he wasn’t a killer. Romeo hadn’t been a killer though, and he’d killed two people. MacBeth hadn’t been a killer till his wife convinced him to be, till he’d figured he maybe could be the King of Scotland after all. Hamlet had killed Polonius accidentally after all, a blind stab through the curtain.  


Hamlet hadn’t been high at the time though.  


Maybe it wasn’t so bad to be the Shakspearian hero with a fatal flaw. At least they _talked_ about you after you were dead, and your death was usually early and violent. The thought almost made him smile. Almost.  


What was his? A drug problem? The inability to exist without his father’s approval? Just being a general fuck up?  


He didn’t think high schoolers could write essays on that.  


(Question one: What is Kendall Roy’s fatal flaw and how did that lead to his inevitable downfall by his own hands? Make sure to include relevant quotations and examples.)  


His pulse was racing in his ears, blood flowing desperately trying to keep up with the adrenaline that had been coursing through his body for the last half an hour, the last day, the last month, the last year.  


He briefly wondered if he could be sick, but thought probably not. There wasn’t enough feeling for him to. The adrenaline would have to run its course, his heart would have to slow down, his brain defog on it’s own.  


Perhaps his father would simply kill him. That would make things easier.  


He would snap and let him have it, quick and easy. Rome’s hit had been a preview of the violence that was in store for the prodigal son who’d turned Judas in the blink of an eye. Judas had hanged after all hadn’t he? Everybody paid the price. There were no happy endings in a Shakesperian tragedy, and he’d basically melded them all into one and said fuck it let’s work with what we got. In the _blink_ of an _eye._  


No, not the blink of an eye actually.  


At the turn of a phrase.  


No Real Person Involved. 

**Author's Note:**

> no no see, *holds up my english degree* i'm licensed to be this obnoxious, i promise


End file.
